Premonition And A Rescue
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: The mayor of Midgar has a horrible premonition. A waif of Midgar almost dies fighting to save his sister from starvation and illness when a weird kid with white hair stumbles along and saves his stupid ass. A long, long drabble.


_Started October 18th, 2009_

_Do I dare disturb the universe?_

Cool rain pattered on the inch-thick glass keeping the cold polluted air from reaching the inside of the office. Winged silhouettes flew back and forth across his view of the city, his oceanic green eyes unblinking. The night was forever here, at least for the denizens of Midgar. Glowing cool wood pulsed beneath the dancing flames of candles, infused with the power that was inherent to his kind. His fingers hung loosely down by his finely tailored trousers, his coat jacket open, his necktie loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. For the past hour, the Mayor of Midgar was restlessly pacing his fine, wonderful little office like a caged animal, watching the window.

Just an hour ago he had ordered coffee to be brought up to his high office floor, gulping the scorching sludge that passed for coffee like a man in the desert gulps water. _Doesn't gulping water if you're dehydrated have the opposite effect?_ Killing himself by over-consumation of coffee seemed preferable to standing around here, dreading the recurrence of that terrible scene, replaying over and over in his mind.

Just over an hour ago he had been visited upon by a terrible vision. And now that terrible vision was returning to him. He had been standing just like this in front of his window, gazing across the wonderful city he could not even have the dignity to say he managed. It all came to him in pieces and fragments. He saw the winged shapes flying now. It was coming. This terrible thing was coming and he was helpless to stop it. This vision was his own, though if he brought it before his board members in a meeting they would laugh at him and call it nerves. So many people claimed to have foreseen the downfall of Midgar and all mankind, it was a joke. Even among SOLDIER, where some claimed to possess a kind of precognition as well as heightened natural ability.

Why, he heard his compatriots argue in a hypothetical encounter, can't we ever foresee the stock improving? Or Mako profits giving us greater advances in medical science or our families living prosperous, uneventful lives?

"Because that's what hopes are. We make our dreams manifest in other ways."

The Mayor's breath caught on the last word. His pupils shrank to tiny pinpricks, because the vision that swallowed an entire hour of his life evolved again. The sky was burning now. A great ball of something quivering in the sky wreathed with flames. It was coming even closer. He could have sworn the floor was trembling...

----

Glass exploded everywhere. Pieces of metal shredded shacks made of salvaged tin like paper. People were screaming. The walls caved, compromised support structures bending and groaning like overburdened pack animals. The plate came plummeting toward them and those helpless to stop it simply cowered in fear, closed their eyes, cast their prayers to their gods, and waited. It was inevitable that death would come from above, or from the very air that polluted them. Exhaust from the Mako reactors would choke off every last breathable ounce of air until everyone died of respiration-related problems. But this, this kind of death, was much preferable to the death awaiting them in the air - or standing just beyond the walls of Midgar, its jaws exuding a thick choking smoke as it breathed death on Shinra Headquarters.

Just a moment of pain and shock and regret. Then nothing more.

----

The Mayor grasped the edge of the windowsill, coffee seeping into the expensive carpet. He gasped, retched, trying to fight off the terrible vertigo of dying a hundred thousand lives. It was going to come and quickly. His very nerve endings crackled with the certainty of it. He wanted to tell someone, anyone, about this awful vision. But no one would believe. And if they did, they would tell him to shut the hell up and go back up to his office and make sure no one else heard about it or he would be in deep, deep trouble.

He was the goddamn mayor of this city and no one could be bothered to hear him out if he was fully aware of imminent danger. Hell. He knew danger was coming to this city the moment it was celebrating the construction of the first maginuclear reactor in Section 5. His eyes widened and he looked out onto the city. The flaming sky and the flying silhouettes resolved into a blur of black and flashing lightning. There was no hallucination now. Only rain streaming across the inch thick protective glass, obscuring the city below completely from sight.

----

_And the dead shall walk the earth._

Gutters were washed of the filth and detritus with oily, smelly water. The rain stank of decay and chemicals. It was rain only in the sense that it fell from the sky, but after the downfall found its way to the cracks or metal grating it collected all of the filth of the rich living above, it doused and polluted the poor who lived below, the other filth of Midgar, the City of Mako. Now and then, a piece of garbage floated by, only to be snatched up and quickly appraised for any sign of usefulness or edibility. Now that the pillars had all collapsed and the plate was gone, rain fell straight from the sky but it was still dangerous. Water that could move thousands of pounds of earth was suddenly coming from straight up, soaking everything through.

Dirty magick street lights flickered on and off as the last of the Mako energy keeping them glowing showed signs of breaking down, since there were very few people with the knowledge to use electricity to keep them burning strong. In darker corners, people tended to go in and never return.

In a small tin-shelter community, nothing moved for a moment. High-spirited mud-covered children huddled indoors until it was bright enough through the broken cracks of the fallen plate. Mud squelched beneath cut bare feet on top of buried hidden dangers dwelling in the mud. Poisonous ones. Ones that would cause infections lethal to small children.

Sector 8's playground was already destroyed, but even the broken pieces of childhood could still entertain and distract from the wreckage. Smoking bits of rubble, weeks later, still cooled as if burning with the undying breath of hell. Poorer sectors had moved here, eliminating any sense of privacy or cleanliness. So the children comingled and darted back and forth, shredding apart pieces of paper Midgar currency that was now so very useless to them. Everyone used bread cards now that they used to collect free meals at traveling food distributors.

Suddenly among the running dirty children there was shouting. Someone had found something to eat, but the child was refusing to share - not just because he was greedy, but because he had a younger sister who was starving to death, unable to keep any food down and unable to even come outside to search for herself. He used his whole body to shield the prize - a moldy hunk of bread wrapped in protective plastic. His hazel eyes were wild and furious, full of the natural madness that desperation calls forth, his shaggy uncut mousy brown hair hanging and dirty over his face.

Another boy was pummeling him about the head and shoulders, trying to pry his wiry arms apart and grab the bread.

"Let go, Kai! Bread's mine, I found it first, y'little shit, give it back!"

"Leave me alone! Leave me _alone_!" His screams were shrill, catching the attention of other kids. "I'll tell, I'll tell on you, you big jerk!"

The bigger boy, much better fed, kicked him, landing a solid blow right onto his hip. The small boy fell over and landed squarely in the middle of a mud pit. He held the bread above the muddy water, gasping and struggling not to drown but not willing to give up his bread either. The bigger boy slowly and purposefully waded in after him.

"Ooh, I'm scared! Who you gonna tell on me this time? That big dummy with the gun on his arm? Or the pasty-faced guy who doesn't talk? Jus' shu'up an' gimme that before you drop it in an' ruin it, stupid."

"Get away from me!"

"You're bein' awful greedy. Your sister's always been sick anyway, why doncha just let 'er die? She's not gonna survive all the rain an' anyway, that bread's all moldy. Give it to me, or I'll let ya drown!"

The hazel-eyed boy quivered. The mud was sucking his boots off. His grandfather had given him those boots ages ago, told him they had once belonged to someone very important. They didn't seem very important now, as the mud took them straight off his feet along with one of his holey socks. He fixed the older boy with a dark look.

"She won't die. She just needs to eat. And you're never taking anything from me again... Understand?!"

The bigger boy seemed hopped up on his own bigness. He laughed loudly. Kids gathered closer. He grabbed Kai by the shoulder and yanked him from the mud; Kai felt something in his joint pop loudly like a kind of soda can, only more muffled. He howled with pain when it became clear that the pop came with hurt. He clutched the bread, but the bigger boy snatched it from his pain numbed fingers and shoved him away into even deeper mud.

"Stupid."

"Hey, Winston, don't let him drown!" shouted one brave little boy, hiding behind the old mog slide.

"I said if he gave it to me, I wouldn't let him drown. He's gonna drown cuz I had to take it by force, and I don't like that." He quickly muscled his way out of the muddy pit before it could take him down too. He ran away from the scene as fast as his heavy-set body could carry him.

Kai gulped as he watched, sinking even more. He stared at the helpless children who gazed on in confusion and sadness. He watched them turn and walk away. There wasn't enough adults to mount some kind of rescue, and even if there was, he was just another orphaned kid looking after his sick little sibling. No one cared if he went missing. If he died, no one would be left to care about his sister or whether she died, too.

Kai struggled suddenly, growling and shouting, even if his shoulder hurt and burned like nothing else. Not even the wild kobold bite he got when he had ventured too far. Swallowing his pride, he went slack and shouted, "Help! Someone help me, please!!"

As the mud started to close up around his neck, his weak lungs gasping for breath, he thought he spied a figure emerging from the rubble where none of the children had gone. He sucked in a last breath and hollered wordlessly in a panic, before he was devoured by mud.

An endless eternity in wet, choking, toxic darkness passed. He didn't dare breathe, and for a few long moments he felt like he could hold his breath long enough before-- before... what? If anyone had cared enough to investigate the sharp panicked cry, if anyone cared enough to dig through the deceptively undisturbed surface of the quick sand and find a slowly suffocating boy...

His lungs began to ache for breath. Then his chest began to hurt, straining to do the thing it had been doing since he had been born into the world. In a moment of panic, behind his closed eyes, he began to imagine the Lifestream the old crazies talked about. It flowed throughout the world, bringing beautiful creatures to life once more, recycling the living chi that flowed through every creature, every blade of grass, every whale that swam in the sea.

Or maybe he was just seeing things.. and hoping that whatever blue-green threads kept the world together, it would gently bring his sister after him.

He reached out without thinking, unknowing of which way was up. He had already strained not to take a breath. _Come on, Saya, don't worry about me. You know I'll always take care of you. I'll be right here when you come after me._

Then something struck his arm. Struck it hard. So hard it hurt. Then he was moving violently upward, and it turned his stomach. He wanted to breathe, the pressure on his chest was so hard it was like bricks. Then the world was turned upside down - or rightside up. Someone else had grabbed him roughly and turned him onto his side, on solid, hard ground. Someone smacked him across his shoulders, shouting, "Fool! Idiot boy!! Breathe now, damn you!"

It wasn't exactly a polite way to remind his body to function. His brain startled, he gasped once, then heaved horribly and panted pathetically for air while someone behind him watched. The shadow, mysteriously striding from the rubble, watching him, just before the darkness had closed over him.

When he could regain a normal rhythem to breathe to, he turned to get a good look. Even then, it was still bleary. And he was smelly, covered in mud, and probably whatever toxic chemicals cooked in the earth, mixed in with dirt and trash. He wanted to take a long hot bath, but down here, that kind of luxury was in dire short supply.

Which reminded him of another necessity. Food. It was gone. The loaf, moldy though it was, would have helped. And now it was gone.

The man before him was kneeling, covered in mud also, but his clothing looked pristine if one eliminated the muck. Black completely covered him from the jaw down, a zipper running from throat to just above where the navel might be. His hair was the color of the moon - absolutely white and hung however it wanted in front of his face. It too was a bit sticky with mud. The stranger flipped it out of his eyes, fixing Kai firmly with a stare. His rescuer had a strange youthful look that was both ageless and terrifying. How serious his eyes looked!

"Who... who are you?" Kai managed to cough.

"I... I don't know," the strange boy creature replied feverishly. "I'm not interested in who you are. I heard you calling for someone. Someone I'm looking for." He leaned forward, grabbing Kai by his hair and whispering without mercy, "You're looking for Mother too but you were drowning yourself in mud."

"I wasn't drowning myself! Someone... Someone took my bread and ran away, leaving me to drown. Ow... th-that hurts!" Kai, caught by his hair, clawed with his slippery fingers at the fingers ruthlessly pulling his hair. The other boy, the mysterious kid who rescued him but now was holding him by the hair like an animal, let go slowly, sinking back on his bottom, glad to be away from the hurt look the younger child had pinned on him.

The two boys stared at each other. The prettier-but-older boy sighed and covered his face with his muddy hands. "This is hopeless. I still can't find her."

Kai thought privately that he didn't remember calling for anyone in particular. Not for his mother, certainly. He hadn't thought about his mom since she had passed away from Mako poisoning when there was an accident at Reactor 0 when it had been blown up by one of the first few terrorists groups. His sister had barely come away with her life, but somehow she had survived - with illnesses and constant ailments and the dreams. They had all once lived under Zero's glaring bright lights and constant thrumming of planet-killing machinery.

"My mother's been dead three years," said Kai quietly. "I couldn't've called for her. She's gone and she's never coming back."

The older boy pushed white hair from his eyes, a sickeningly hopeless look growing stronger on his face. His bizarre, cat-shaped pupils shrank to tiny slits, he grimaced with pain, and he buried his face in his hands, unleashing the most unusual noise of agony Kai had ever heard. The closest he could come to was the cry of the wild Lobos that wandered around a small section of the sector. Next to the noise this boy was wringing forth from his throat, it was the loneliest sound in the entire city.

"I'm sorry if I upset you," Kai added quietly as he got to his feet. He left the other alone, before he began to follow where he thought his enemy Winston had vanished with his bread. His bare feet squelched in the mud, but he didn't care if that was his only pair of shoes now sitting at the bottom of a Mako mud pit. His skin prickled all over. He tried not to rub his eyes, but it was getting into his nose and mouth and eyes. The strange boy would just have to sit there and be crazy; he didn't have time to take care of another kid, even if it was a bigger kid.

He saw them then. Winston was on his throne, sitting on top of the slide, stuffing chunks of his fat face with the bread that was meant for his sister. His eyes narrowed, his face felt hot, baking the mud caked on his skin. He clenched his hands and stormed over to the slide, standing at the bottom, and the kids gathered around stopped everything they were doing, staring with wide-eyed disbelief.

Winston stopped half-way with a piece of bread to his mouth. His eyes took in the muddy wreckage of his latest murder. "So you got out. I'm impressed."

"Give it back." He said it slowly and meaningfully to show he truly meant business. His voice even seemed different to him.

"It's already half gone. Why don'tcha just give up already? Or do you really wanna die, just like your stupid mother? Maybe I'll even send your sister along so ya don't get lonely."

Kai squared his shoulders, the remark about his mother making his skin even hotter. He wiped mud from his face and spat on the slide. "Big words, sitting all the way up there. Get down here, and let's fight properly."

"Little prick!" Winston stuffed the bread into a satchel tied onto the top of the slide. Then he stormed down it and swung at Kai. Kai ducked out of the way, clenched his fist, and swung as hard as he could at the bigger boy's head. His ear made a nice target. It connected and Winston yelped like a dog but he didn't fall. He rounded on Kai like an enraged bear, one hammy fist aimed to nail Kai directly in the face. But because of his punch, he had lost his balance, and it went flying over his head, clipping him in the shoulder instead. He rolled on the ground. Winston kicked, struck, blindly. He threw himself to the ground, bite, snarl, one solid fist landing on Winston's nose, the young boy wriggling, slippery with mud, couldn't get a good grip on the kid's clothes. He sent a heel right into the boy's groin, Winston screamed, clawed at Kai's face. A knee in his stomach, the taste of blood in his mouth, couldn't get a breath. Swinging, swinging, wriggling and punching. His limbs were flailing without sense, tentacles of destruction, only he was gasping for his next breath.

Then he had air; it wasn't so hard to breathe, considering he had nearly died in muck. He was shaking so badly he could hardly see clearly; Winston, gone. Winston was actually laying flat-out on the ground, a black figure relaxing from a striking poise standing above him and Kai, his head of white hair eclipsing the pale sun.

"Get up," the stranger commanded. "Let's go."

"B-But my bread-" Kai said, ashamed that he whined rather than spoke. However, the older boy had gripped him right by the arm and dragged him from the scene. "Is he dead? Hey, answer me!"

"He will be in a few days." Was that a smile on the other's lips? He stared at the nameless hero, wondering who in the world he thought he was, killing boys without even thinking - killing them with joy, it seemed. But then he imagined the look on Winston's face as he watched Kai sinking.

He felt a lot better knowing this kid was on his side.

"But my bread. I need it, it's for my sister, she's starving, and she's not feeling well."

The boy dragged him along. He was still soaked with muck, and his skin was still burning. He looked up at him, trying to get his attention, but the other was focused on something else. Particularly on the small, pathetic store that passed for a food shop. Most of the food sold was beyond sell-by dates, but if one knew what food to buy, one could make off like a bandit. Provided one had any gil.

"Stay here," the white-haired boy commanded. "Try not to get yourself killed, for Mother's sake." He disappeared into the store front, the creaky old tin door made up of hammered-together pieces of tin. Anyone could simply break in and steal everything in there, but not usually did anyone want to face the enormous man standing guard in front of it. He was three times the size of Winston with scruff all over his face and Wutai skin. He was the grandson of the old lady who owned and ran the store.

He stared at the ground, feeling self-conscious. He peeled off pieces of mud, plopping them to the ground, trying to find out whether he had any skin left underneath it all. It turned out he did, and by the time the white-haired boy returned, he almost looked like himself, if not smeared still with blackness. The white-haired boy carried a bag of groceries in one arm. It looked stuffed with things to eat, and bottles of clean water.

"W-Where'd you get all the money to..." Kai slowly looked up, seeing the other staring at him with a look of concentration.

"You look familiar."

"Never seen you before, though. I'd remember if I had." Kai grinned. He was glad to be the center of so much kindly attention - assuming all that stuff in the bag was for his sister and himself.

The stranger finally shook his head, as if clearing it from a memory. Then he said, "I just remembered something anyway. My name is Kadaj. I'm looking for Mother, but she's not here. But because that boy was cruel to you, I'll help you and your sister until the others come."

"Others?"

"I've called them here." A feverish happiness filled those bizarre eyes once again; he practically danced own the street with the bag. "Come, boy! Let's hurry on before your sister returns to the Planet!"

"Them? Who are you talking about?" _Jeez, he sure talks funny_, Kai thought privately. He ran after the other. His bare feet pattered on the packed, drying ground. His thoughts turned to his sister, even as the other boy began to talk at length of those he spoke about. His sister must be worried like hell, if she wasn't sleeping. He hoped she was resting and not sitting outside, watching for him.

"My brothers. I've called them together. Now they'll come here, and we'll look for Mother together once again. It won't be too long." He dropped an arm around Kai's shoulders with a giggle. "Now that fat little bastard is going to die, you won't have anything to worry about. And if I help you, you'll help me look for Mother. Right?"

"R-Right..." He wondered what he was even talking about. Mother? Maybe he was an orphan. If he was, he surely was an awfully old kid to be an orphan. He noticed something as he was walking close by him. There was a sheath to a bladed weapon hanging from his hip, bumping against his rear end. The pommel was rather decorative. "Where do you think she might be?"

"Someone might be hiding her from us." Kadaj, who seemed happy to answer anyone's questions, looked stern. Even murderous. "If I find out who has her, I'll find some creative way to make them all pay. Every single last one of them."

Kai shuddered, swallowing his fear. "Wh...What do your brothers look like?"

"I don't know yet. I won't know until they arrive. They'll make themselves known, that's for sure."

"What about your mom? Who would hide her from you? What does she look like? I can't help you look if I don't know what she looks like."

"Y-You ask too many questions!" Kadaj pushed him. Kai went flying, landing on the ground. He struggled to his feet and glared at Kadaj, but the other was already walking in the wrong direction.

"My house is this way!"


End file.
